A Change of Mind
by docs pupil
Summary: Perhaps one of the cogs in the machine fueling the Grand Plan needs a little grease, or perhaps, Anarchy has won the day today. Regardless which these is true, Captain Alex Hawthorne and the Vicar Maximilian DeSoto are in for a surprise.
1. Chapter 1

Beneath a towering canopy of gray and red foliage, pushed into the irregular vermilion face of a sheer cliff, a weathered, prefab lab sits quiet and empty at the edge of a fungus and grass plain.

"There it is, almost where the creepy scientist said it would be." The Captain of the Unreliable scampers up a steep hill, standing at the top as she shades her eyes against the setting sun. "And it only took six hours to find."

"A personal record, I'm sure," the winded Vicar complains, taking a seat on a man-sized boulder for a quick rest.

"Tired already, Vic, we're just getting started." Felix joins their fearless leader at the top of the hill, squinting through the dense trees.

"I am _not_ tired," the indignant, older man shouts up the hill. "I'm…staying out of sight of the wildlife."

"We should keep going, it's almost sundown." The Captain checks the map on her bulky data pad, then hurries down toward the ramshackle building.

As the trio zigzags between the clusters of dense plants, a marauder stalks toward the them on his hands and knees, growling as he squares his shoulders.

Curious, the trio stops to watch a man on all fours try to threaten three upright adults with snarls and barking noises under a mud-encrusted helmet.

"This reminds me of one of your comic books, Felix," the young woman whispers as the marauder stalks closer.

"Hey, maybe he was bit by a radioactive Canid." Felix draws his toss ball stick, gripping it tighter as the crazed man sniffs the air. "Behold, The Incredible Canid Man."

"Or, The Canid Marauder," the Captain adds, taking careful aim with her pistol. "And his smelly sidekick…uuh…Red Hide."

The Vicar sighs, bringing out his shot gun. "Do you two ever take anything seriously?"

"Not if I can help it," the young woman retorts.

The instant the crazed Marauder leaps awkwardly toward the group, a bat to the helmet and two separate sets of bullets send him flying backwards to an untimely death.

"Well that was strange, even for a Marauder," the Vicar comments, looking down dispassionately at the dead body.

The Captain rifles through his pockets and pouches finding a few shots of Adreno and a crumpled piece of paper. She tilts her head and squints, holding the paper closer to her nose. "Left…right…up…down…thunder…noses? I wonder what that means."

"Nothing, obviously," Vicar Max tells her. "It's the manic scribbles of a brain-dead deserter."

The woman shrugs, pocketing the note as she heads onward to the lab.

The front double doors lay broken off their hinges in the reddish dirt. The absolute dark of the lab interior is interrupted by the weak light of dying fluorescent bulbs lining the ceiling.

"Spooky." Felix is taken aback by the echo of his own voice. He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts the word louder, grinning from ear to ear.

The Captain leads the way into the lonely, dimly lit facility, trying every door at either side. Five of the eight doors open up into small offices or forgotten storage rooms, while the others have been permanently disabled.

At the end of the hall, the group finds a cargo elevator with no roof stuck between the second and third floors. Stacked neatly at the center of the large square conveyor is two large metal boxes with the logos haphazardly scraped off.

"I'll jump first." The young lady holsters her weapon and aims for the boxes. She botches her landing, knocking the crates over as she slams face first onto the grated metal floor. The elevator creaks and squeals as the Captain gets to her feet and dusts her armor off. She tells them its safe before exiting to the second level.

"That's not a good sound." Vicar DeSoto can feel his shoulders tense at the thought of the elevator giving way under his feet. He hops down onto the nearest of the crates, nearly jumping out of his own skin as the platform inches down. He quickly makes as exit, goading Felix to hurry.

Without an iota of hesitation, the young man jumps down confidently, his feet planting firmly on the elevator floor. The loud creaking turns to strained bending as the conveyor starts to slip down toward the dark lower levels beyond. Felix barely manages to hop over the metal box in his way and get a sturdy footing before the whole apparatus is swallowed up by the darkness.

A ways down, a dull, thud is followed by a loud splash as metal meets liquid in a spectacularly loud fashion.

The concerned questions of his boss are put to rest by his usual bravado as he asks the obvious of his shipmates. "What's this writing on wall?" Felix points at the poorly scrawled words at about eye level.

"I'm not sure." The young woman squints and tilts her head, trying to make out more than vague chicken scratch with arrows beside each alleged word. "Could be directions."

"It is directions," the Vicar says narrowing his eyes in the dim light. "Generator, main lab, stairs, ect cetera."

"How can you tell," the Captain wonders, furrowing her brow at the illegible letters.

"It's an old form of shorthand I sometimes use to jot my ideas down quickly. Although, why anyone all the way out here would use such an archaic form of writing is a mystery."

She draws her pistol, keeping that interesting nugget of information for later. "Which way is the Main Lab?"

"The arrow points down the hall." He points to his right where the only doorway sits half ajar in the shadows.

"And the generator?"

"The next floor down I'm assuming, since the arrow is pointing at the floor."

The young woman leads them down the hall, stopping at the half open door with a dead Canid stuck firmly between it and the wall.

The young man chimes in as the Captain takes a knee to examine the creature. "That must be Red Hide. Poor guy never stood a chance, bein' the sidekick and all."

"Will you cease and desist, Mister Millstone?" The Vicar gives him a deeply disapproving scowl, which is promptly ignored.

With her medically trained eye, the young Captain notices something off about the animal's general disposition. Even in it's now deceased state, there's an almost human-like quality to its fearful death stare. "I think it died of shock. Can Canids die from shock?"

Felix shrugs. "Who knows."

"Who cares," Vicar DeSoto snaps. "We're here to find a scientist's machine, not to play amateur zoologist."

Their leader sighs, taking the hint as she brings out her lock picking tools.

The door slams shut on the Canid corpse before sliding open.

The trio give a unified "eww" as they step over the bloody halves of carcass.

The adventures enter a decently sized room, finding two sizable consoles at the northern and southern ends of the room. Next to the northern console is a glitchy computer console with a cracked screen facing a panoramic window pressed up against the red rock outside the wide pane of glass.

"You mentioned stairs, right Vicar?"

"Yes, I did, and they should be somewhere in this room."

She tells her companions to split up as she kicks aside bloody scraps of garbage, surveying the room for any other doors.

After a few minutes of poking around and emptying boxes of their contents, Felix Millstone finds a hatch set into the corner of the floor hidden under a pile of bloody refuse. "It's got more of that weird writing on it."

"Stairs," the old man reads out loud as the young man clears away the garbage. "Which means the generator is down there."

"Hey, Felix."

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Think you could find the generator and give it the good ol' Millstone whack?"

"I'm on it." The young man pries open the hatch, climbing down into the clammy darkness.

The Vicar points out the obvious, crossing the room to sit at the half working terminal. "You do understand if he breaks the generator, we'll be up shit creek without a paddle, so to speak."

The Captain bites back the urge to give a snide comment as she heads to the console against the window. "I know, Vicar, I know, just have some faith and patience. Like you're supposed to." Her hand hovers over the buttons and levers as she looks over the instructions on her data pad.

"Funny…" The Vicar curses at the glitchy terminal, giving the side of the monitor a hard slap.

While the old man fiddles with the computer console, the Captain makes hesitant adjustments to the mess of electronics before her. "The blueprint says this console is the power flow regulator, and the other one is 'the Converter'." She stands quietly, reading and re-reading the directions, feeling even more confused after each try. "What would Parvati do?"

"Why don't I go back to the ship and send Miss Holcomb over. I'm sure she'll be happy to grope around in a dark, damp, partially underground facility." He manually reboots the computer, waiting for it to power back up, as his scowl grows deeper.

The Captain takes a few deep, calming breaths before asking the obvious. "What's got your cassock in a twist, Vicar? Because you've been extra…'Max-million-y' since we got here."

He turns to face the distracted woman at his immediate right, staring between the schematics and her adjustments. "Firstly, I hate the way you say my name with that lazy tongue of yours, secondly, there's something not quiet right about this place. How does one build a multi-story facility into the side of a mountain, on a lawless planet, without a lot of the 'right' kind of help?"

"So Max-million Day-Soto's, and not the science-worshipping Vicar's, first though is 'corporate conspiracy', rather than 'freelance science'? What if some smart guys somewhere got a bright idea and pooled their resources together?"

The older man snorts, a condescending smirk pulling at the corner of his lip. "Oh please, the day someone smart has a bright idea is the day I'll eat my shoe. And I don't worship science, I advocate for it," he adds as an aside turning back to the now working computer.

She mumbles a few choice words under breath, getting back to her adjusting.

The red lights shut off a moment before the crackle of bright florescent white illuminates the dark space.

To the young lady's surprise, her careful fiddling has the machine humming. The Captain mentally pats herself on the back, crossing the room to the other console.

Once the Vicar is done downloading the notes from the computer, he watches as the woman straps a dome-shaped, wire choked metal lattice to her naked head. "And just what do you think _you're_ doing?"

She buckles the flimsy chin strap, doing her best to untangle the wires screwed into the helmet's framework. "We have to make sure it works, so we get paid, don't we?" The Captain follows the knot of warm wires from helmet, to console, to the second helmet lodged behind said console beneath a pile of scrap metal and garbage.

"By testing prototype technology on ourselves," he scoffs, shaking his head. "You're crazier than I thought."

"We're just gonna make sure it turns off and on and makes noises, Vicar." She waves the second helmet in his direction. "Besides, the directions say the machine won't work unless the helmets register two specimens hooked up to it."

"Anything else I should be aware of," the old man wonders, giving her his usual look of disapproval as he relents to her silent request and helmet waving.

She squints at the minuscule letters at the bottom of the digital blueprint, unable to make out all the words. "DISCLAIMER: do not something something helmet something something machine…um, more words…brain carnage."

"That's not very reassuring."

The young woman grabs Felix's attention as he climbs out of the hatch. "Hit the large, blue button and make sure all the needles in the meters are pointing straight up." She points him in the direction of the power regulator.

"Got it." The young man nods, taking his place at the front of the machine. He smashes his fist down on the large, blue button at the far right. Felix watches intently as said needles jump to life, all four pointing straight up.

A shiver runs down the Vicar's spine as the electricity thrumming through the helmet dances across his scalp. "What an unusual sensation." He shivers, as a smile creeps across his face. "I'm excited for no reason."

The Captain's cheeks flush rosy red and a blanket of nervous calm envelopes her. "My whole body feels like it wants to run and sleep at the same time." She hugs herself, shivering. "It's weird."

The lights above the room flicker momentarily.

The meter second from the left jumps to the three o'clock position.

The two hooked to the machine give a collective groan, cradling the sides of their heads.

"It works, turn it off now, Felix," the Captain implores, trying to ignore the growing pressure running across her forehead.

He smashes the button once more, but the console keeps feeding power to the other machine. "It's not working."

"Turn off the generator," the old man orders through gritting teeth, trying to will away his splitting headache.

"I got a better idea." The young man kneels before the wide console, prying off a loose panel. "Saw Parvati do this once, only with tools." He reaches in, grabs hold of the thickest bunch of wires, and yanks them straight out.

The needles jump haphazardly left to right, as a warning light flashes above each of the meters.

The lights in the lab ceiling blink and flicker in time to the movements of the meters.

The two grimace and groan as the pressure inside their skulls grows unbearable. The two shout something across the room in unison, but it falls on deaf ears.

A surge of energy thunders through the helmets and into the Captain and the Vicar. Their bodies seize and convulse as the overloaded wires begin to spark and smoke. Arcs of blue electric run back and forth between the helmets, fueling the convulsions of their helpless bodies.

Felix reaches up and hits the button once more, hearing the humming of the machine stop dead altogether.

The lights in the ceiling snap from the strain as the Captain and Vicar hit the floor, both out cold, their helmets smoking.

"Oh no…" Is all the young man can say as he looks over his shoulder and sees both his shipmates unconscious, laying on the floor. He scrambles over to where they lay, shaking their shoulders. "Boss? Vicar?" He finally gives up, sitting on his knees between them, defeated. "Shit."

The Captain slowly comes to, groaning and cradling her head. She finds herself tucked into bed, blinking and trying to clear the fog from her brain. The young lady throws the cover back and sits up slowly, getting her bearings on reality back just as sluggishly. "By the Law, my head is splitting." Her heart nearly jumps out of her chest at the voice accompanying the words. "By the Law," she declares louder.

The feminine sounds emanating from her mouth with every syllable unnerve her to the point of nervous hyperventilation. She takes deep, calming breaths, closing her eyes to shut out the foreign surroundings of the Captain's quarters. "Calm yourself Maximilian, it's just another vivid dream. You'll wake up soon enough now that you're aware it's a dream." She lays back down, balling her fists at her sides as she waits for herself to wake up. "Now would be preferable."

A dull ache from inside his skull, rouses the Vicar to the waking world. He drags himself up to sit at the edge of the bunk, bleary-eyed and achy. "Oh…what happened…?" His shock at the sound of his voice overrides the general feeling of mind-fog. "What," he slowly repeats, feeling a growing sense of panic constricting his chest. "Happened?"

He fights down the feeling, trying to process his foreign surroundings. "I sound like the Vicar. Why do I sound like the Vicar?" He feels himself, head to torso, finding a flat chest and shapely muscles. "Am I…?" The Vicar laughs at herself for thinking such a preposterous notion. "No, that's not possible, technology's not that advanced. Is it?" He gets up and walks into the narrow hall, catching the ship's ever distracted engineer entering her quarters. "Parvati!" His shout stops her at the doorway as he runs up to her. "Who am I?" The Vicar points at his old face.

"Uh…" The grimy young lady is unsure how to answer. "I'm pretty sure you're Vicar Max?"

"Are you sure?" The Vicar points harder with both fingers at his face.

"Abso-surely." Her dirty brow furrows with slight confusion. "If you're havin' head problems, maybe Miss Ellie can have another look at you."

He lets slip a sight of relief. "Oh wow…Then that means—"

"You!" He starts at the sound of a familiar voice shouting from the other end of the hall. "What, in the name of the Law, have you done to me?!" The Captain stomps toward a cringing Vicar, edging away.

The old man retreats into the kitchen. "I didn't know this would happen! You can't blame me!"

The two go back and forth as they circle the kitchen table, where Nyoka and Ellie are having a peaceful breakfast.

"Did you not _once_," the Captain emphasizes the word with a single finger pointed up. "Think it was suspicious that we met a lone scientist in the lower basement of a secret medical clinic at the back of a cave!"

"So." The Vicar shrugs, keeping a chairs length between them as they dance around the table. "We meet people in strange places all the time."

"Do you know what your problem is," the young woman shouts across the table. "You don't think! I'm beginning to suspect you don't have two brain cells to rub together!"

Ellie takes a sip from her mug, leaning over to Nyoka sitting in the chair to her left. "Is it just me, or did the Captain and Vic switch mouths?"

Nyoka takes a long draw from her flask. "I'm not sober enough to try to figure out what those two are playing at."

"You're never sober enough for anything, Miss Ramnarie-Wentworth," the Captain snaps at the huntress.

Her brows disappear under her wild dreadlocks as a look of utter indignation colors her features. "Excuse me?"

"Vicar, shut up," the old man tells her, his voice dropping lower. "Right now."

Despite the warning, the young lady can't help but keep poking the bear. "Flush the Spectrum Red out of your ears for once, you glorified tour guide!"

"Whoa, Vicar!" The two women square up to each other across the wide, plastic table, but the Vicar grabs the Captain by the shoulders and drags her into the hall.

"Tone it down a smidge," he demands in an even tone, still holding fast to her shoulders. "Your beef is with me, not Naioka."

"Oh, indeed it is, _Captain_." The young lady sucker punches him, her knuckles connecting with his jaw.

A mildly excited "ouch" comes from the ship's pirate physician.

The Vicar holds his jaw, dumbfounded at the retaliation. "Ow! What was that—" His complaint dies on his lips as a small fist rams into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

"I'm going for a walk!" The Captain leaves her ship in a huff, trying to recoup her thoughts.

The Vicar slumps against the nearest wall, coughing the breath back into his chest as he cradles his midsection.

Felix and Parvati poke their heads out of their quarters, the latter asking the obvious. "Are you okay, Vicar?"

"What in Law's name did you do to the Captain, Vic," Ellie wonders. "She's never so much as raised her voice until now."

"Nothing." He clears his throat, standing up straighter than usual. "Felix, would you care to join me in my quarters?" The Vicar waves a hand at the only closed door along the hall.

"Uh—"

"We need to talk."


	2. Chapter 2

Confused, Felix gives a questioning look to Parvati who, just as bewildered, shrugs. As close to cautious as the young man usually dares to err, he crosses the narrow hall and enters the Vicar's quarters.

"Close the door," the older man says, grunting as he sits on his bunk, still cradling his sore middle. "Felix, can you tell me what happened after the machine went haywire?"

The young man narrows his eyes at the holy man, crossing his arms over his chest. "Since when do you call me by my first name?"

"What are you talking about, I've always…ahhh…" The Vicar Max bites his tongue, remembering who's skin they're in. He mumbles a short reprimand, frowning. "Millstone…_Mister_ Millstone. Could you possibly, maybe enlighten me as to the significant happenings that occurred during the electrical malfunction of the machine."

Felix senses something off about the man sitting across from him, but he can't quite put his finger on it. "You wanna know what happened when the machine broke?"

"Yeah—" The Vicar clears his throat, shaking his head. "I mean 'yes'. 'Indeed'."

"Well, let's just say I, Felix Millstone, single-handedly dragged your unconscious bodies out of a sinking lab, while the rest of the crew looked on in amazement…"

He nods, taking the rest of the story with a bags worth of grain salt.

The infuriated stolen body of the Captain stomps up a rocky hillside, fuming at her predicament. She curses and spits at any name she can think of, including her own for going along with these—for lack of a better word—shenanigans. At the very top, she stops, taking a deep breath to calm her temper.

The red and gray moonlit vista of the Monarch wilds proves a busy, yet soothing panorama to look upon while her anger simmers down to a low boil. At the edge of the plains, the smell of water waifs along the nighttime breeze, and the stiff, gray shoots of giant plants creak in time with the unheard rhythm of the wide open spaces.

Even after having walked through the grass and trees too many times to count, an overwhelming sense of awe and wonder still wells up in her chest. She looks down at the alien land and can't help but be caught off guard by it's completely foreign nature. From the back of the Captain's mind, a nagging sense of dread rears it's ugly head, and she fights back the urge to cry. After beating her emotions into submission, she dries the wet welling up at the side of her eyes. "The stress must be getting to me," the young woman reassures herself, swallowing the lump forming in her throat. "Perhaps it's time for me to meditate."

The Captain rolls the tension out of her shoulders, concentrating on a point at the dark horizon as she clears her mind. "They who...uh..." confused by the sudden memory lapse, her brow furrows. She keeps her eyes to the horizon, forcing her racing mind to slow. "They who…are…?" Quiet panic churns her stomach, at the thought of not remembering a single word of the scripture she's poured her heart and soul into studying for years. Again, she has to put a strangle hold on her emotions, thinking this through rationally. "Partial amnesia from trauma is not unheard of. Doctor Fenhill would have a better grasp of the neurological aspects, but if given time, maybe this will clear itself up."

A small updraft sends a shiver down her spine. She hugs herself against the stab of chilly air, giving a sigh of resignation. "Who am I kidding, we're probably going to be stuck like this for the rest of our lives." The young woman pushes away the urge to cry, pursing her lips as she tries to ignore the rush of thoughts invading her mental quiet.

From a ways down the dimly lit road, gunshots and shouts can be heard over the roars of the gigantic wildlife bouncing off the broken cliff faces.

Without thinking, the young woman reaches for her pistol, hurrying down the hillside. She stops mid-stride, realizing the insanity of what she's doing. Her gut screams for her to stop and think, but her head tells her to help her fellow man. The Captain sighs, leaving her gun in the holster. "This is ridiculous. First I want to cry, then I want to go guns-blazing into the fray." She massages her temples, heading back to the ship, even more frustrated and confused.

While the Vicar paces back and forth mumbling to himself in the Captain's quarters arguing with himself, the rest of the crew has an impromptu meeting in the kitchen area.

The always even-tempered Ellie stands at the head of the heavy plastic table, brows raised, jerking her thumb in the direction of the crew quarters behind her. "So, are we hearing the same thing? I don't know what they're getting at, but it's getting kind of weird."

Parvati mentions the Captain complaining about work being a little slow for the past week. "Maybe the two of them got together and concocted something fun to do."

The pirate doctor scoffs at the idea. "The Vicar? Having fun? Come on, Parvati, you don't seriously think that's true?"

The engineer shrugs apologetically. "I can't think of anything else that would make sense."

Nyoka takes her seat opening a half-finished bottle of Spectrum Red before fishing out her empty flask from her hip pocket. "Unless Felix forgot to mention something after coming back from the lab." She looks right at the young man in question from across the table.

He immediately points the finger back at the huntress, in a more literal fashion. "I told you everything! You were there, Nyoka!"

"I was there after the fact, helping you drag bodies back to the ship. That doesn't count." She refills her flask, taking a long drink after.

"Are you sure you didn't miss anything, Felix?" The engineer's dirty brow wrinkles under her cloth headband. "Could you maybe be glossing over a little detail or two?"

"No! I already told you! We shot some Marauders, we found the lab, the Boss turned on the machine, then her and the Vicar passed out!"

"While hooked up to the machine," the medic clarifies.

"Yeah."

"What does the machine do," Parvati asks their new de-facto leader, pondering her next move. "Did the Captain say?"

"No. I don't think me or the Vicar understood. The Captain definitely didn't." Ellie's lips pull into a one-sided frown, as she crosses her arms. "And what the nervous guy in the smock said didn't make much sense either, he was pretty cryptic about the whole thing." Her eyes light up in realization. "But he did hand over a blueprint. I remember he was adamant about that."

"I could have a look at it? Maybe try to figure what it is?"

"Knock yourself out, the Captain's data pad is in her quarters." Ellie nods in the direction of the stairs.

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "I'll get it later. When the Vicar's not busy."

The front door of the Unreliable hisses open bringing an abrupt end to the crew meeting.

Their Captain walks in, massaging her temples as she passes through the kitchen area.

"Hey, Captain," the doctor calls after her before she can enter the Vicar's room.

She ignores the call, heading inside and slamming the door shut behind her.

"This is getting weird," Nyoka says, tossing the empty bottle in the sink.

Hunched over his data pad, the Vicar sits himself down on the Captain's bunk, knees together, flipping through the numbered sections of the blueprint screen by screen. "Maybe if...no." The old man shakes his head, grunting at the singular, nebulous idea that pops into his head. He goes back and forth on the sections showing how the helmet circuitry connects to the console labeled 'CONDUIT'. "What if…It's never that easy." The same idea nags at him as he keeps reading the annotations between the fine lines of the drawings.

He sighs, placing the pad on the floor by his feet before leaning back against the cold metal wall of the thin bunk. "My brain—his brain," he immediately corrects, massaging his temples. "Is too quiet. How does he do it?"

The nebulous idea gradually becomes an urge to act. "Except for that. Does that happen often?" He crosses his arms, staring out the panoramic glass windows at the Monarch foliage.

There's a hard knock at the door, followed by an unsure call of "Captain" from a voice that should be his.

"Yeah?" The door slides open, and the Vicar in her body steps inside, a look of pure enmity coloring her features.

"You have no idea how much I want to put my hands around your neck and just…" the young woman reaches out, her hands ready to strangle. "…Throttle you into next Tuesday." Instead, she grabs the warm air and slowly shakes her hands back and forth, imagining it to be the old man's neck, never breaking eye contact.

The Vicar scoffs. "You think you have it rough? You have no idea how slow and boring it is in your head. It's like you don't have any thoughts at all, and when you do, it's one at a time."

"I meditate daily," the young woman snaps. "Which is something you should consider doing, considering your thought process for, well, everything, is a mess."

"Who has time for staring at your navel when you have a whole planet to explore!" He smiles, gesturing at the wide window overlooking the Monarch wilds.

"Look, I'm just as excited as you are about exploring new civilizations, but we should concentrate on the problem at hand."

"I'm trying, Vicar, but I can't do it with _this head_." He points, emphasizing his words dramatically. "I don't understand how all this quiet works for you, it makes me nervous."

The Captain can feel a small headache coming on. "And the way you piece things together from nothing makes me question your sanity, but here we are, stuck in each other's bodies, using each other's minds. Now, we can either ignore it, or we can try to figure out how to fix this, which would mean going back to that machine and setting it in reverse."

The corner of his pulls into a soft frown. "It can't be that easy. It's never that easy."

"And how would you know?!" The Captain starts to raise her voice, but immediately clamps down on her emotions to keep up civilized discourse.

"The O.S.I. doesn't make 'reverse' buttons. Science is science, whether it succeeds or fails. All experiments yield a result dictated by the Grand Plan." He's surprised by his narrow-minded eloquence. "That was almost smart."

"It _is_ smart. It's also true. But my question is, how did you know to say that in that exact way?"

"Uh…" he furrows his brow. "I don't know, it just came out like word vomit."

She narrows her eyes, concentrating on his now concerned face. "Say something else, but _really focus_ on it as you say it."

The Vicar's orderly mind blanks. "What do I say?"

"I don't know." The young lady shrugs. "How about giving me the basic tenets of Scientism."

"There's six," he clarifies as he counts them off on his borrowed fingers. "Survival of the Fittest, Determinism, Empiricism, Stoicism, Teleological Order, and the Patronage of Science." He's astounded by the ease of his recall. "I didn't even have to think about it, it just came to me."

"And how did you know that?"

"I…" he throws up his hands. "I feel like I've known that for years."

"Which means…" she wrinkles her nose, telling herself to concentrate. "My long-term memory is still in one piece." She folds her arms, resting her chin against her loosely closed fist, picking a spot on the wall to stare at as she attempts to do some deep thinking.

"Oh no…" a fleeting thought catches his fancy, but he squashes it out of existence immediately.

"Oh no, what?" Her thoughtful eyes snap to his.

"Nothing…" he gives a quick, uncomfortable smile, sitting back down on the bunk.

She paces the room, slowly, figuring her way through the information in an agonizingly slow fashion. The young woman, sighs, letting her arms fall to her sides as she gives up trying to wrangle the river of ideas that is 'her brain'. "This is frustrating. Nothing is orderly, yet everything connects in your mind. It's insane. I can't follow any single train of thought to the end."

"You really need to get your emotions under control, Vicar." He lays back, staring up at the metal plating of his bunk. "It'll help you clear your head."

"I've tried! Numerous times! I've also tried meditation! That doesn't seem to work very well!"

"You need to stop getting outwardly upset," he commands, pointing at her. "Redirect it to somewhere useful."

"An armchair psychologist is giving me advice?" The Captain looks down her nose at the old man pointing stiffly at her. "How quaint."

"Isn't that what _you_ do, since it came from _your_ brain?" He cocks his head. "Or me in this case."

"You know what…" she rubs at her tense forehead, moving on from the passive-aggressive fighting. "There's only one way to fix this, that I can see. We go back to the machine."

"Okay. And if it doesn't work, what then?"

"Then, we find the man who gave us the job, and tell him what happened. He might get spooked enough to fix this mess if he found out we broke his damn machine."

"And if he's not there?"

"We go look for him."

"Where?"

"On Monarch. Now stop asking me questions I clearly don't have answers too, and let's go."

The Vicar sits up, unbuttoning his cassock. "You should wait until morning."

"Why?"

"Two reasons." He slips the royal blue vestment over his head, tossing it unceremoniously on the desk across the room. "The first being, I'm tired, and the second being, the scientist isn't going to be in the cave until morning because it was in shambles." He slips off his polished shoes, tucking them side-by-side at the side of the bunk.

"Oh…" The young woman curses her poor memory, finally realizing why she writes everything down in bullet points. "I see."

He lays back down, nestling under the thin cover. "Good night, Vicar."

She grits her teeth, cursing under breath as she leaves.

In the early morning, the Captain passes through the narrow hall, heading into the kitchen for some breakfast. To her surprise, she finds a fresh pot of coffee on the kitchen table, and a wide-awake Parvati sipping on a mug of the steamy brew.

"Good morning, Miss Holcomb," she greets, grabbing the least wet mug from the crying rack. "A fine day we're having."

"Um...Morning, Captain." The engineer nervously sips her beverage, giving the young Captain a sideways glance as she sits and pours in a non-characteristically stoic fashion.

Dragging herself out of her alcohol-scented room, Nyoka knocks on the bathroom door with her fist, demanding the occupant let someone else have a turn.

"Just a minute," the masculine voice from inside shouts through the door.

"Come onnn, Vicar, I gotta go." The hungover Huntress pounds her fist on the door again.

"Can you give me a Law-forsaken minute, Nyoka!"

Hearing the Scientician's voice from behind the door, the Captain looks up from her steamy mug of coffee as the color drains from her face.

Following a tense few seconds of an angry, hungover Monarch hunter threatening to bust the door down, the Vicar comes out of the washroom, a towel over his head, and fresh set of clothes on his back. "You couldn't wait a couple seconds, could you?"

"She shoves past him almost immediately, slamming the door behind herself.

"Bah." He waves her off, drying his damp hair as he enters the kitchen. The old man grabs the bigger of the ceramic mugs and shakes the water off, heading for the pot on the table.

The Captain, doing her best to hide the incredulity of the thought of him taking a shower, stares him down as he takes a seat across from her.

"Don't worry, I didn't look." He drapes the damp towel on the back of his chair, then proceeds to fill his cup two-thirds the way up, reaching for the cream and sugar.

"Why would I be worried." The irritated young lady puts on her best poker face. "It's not as if it's completely foreign to you."

"Now you sound like a dirty old man." He heaps spoonfuls of sugar into his cup, chuckling as he stirs.

She grimaces at the biting tang of the black coffee. "You know exactly what I mean."

"I'm a doctor, not a pervert. Since you're not a patient, it's gonna get awkward if I _do_ decide to look." He sips gingerly at the sugary concoction, his taste-buds repulsed by the overwhelming sweetness.

"Trade?"

The old man nods in the affirmative. "Yeah."

The Vicar and Captain switch mugs, finding the other's taste in morning beverage preferable.

From the other end of the kitchen table, Parvati clears her throat. "Captain, I…um…"

"She needs the blueprints to the machine that made you two crazy," Ellie says, grabbing a cup of coffee for herself.

"It's in my—I mean, it's in the Captain's quarters," the Vicar tells her, gesturing down the hall.

The pirate slurps her morning coffee, after adding a spoonful of sugar. "Don't you two think its weird you acting like this all the time? I'm all for bets, but, come on, you're scaring Parvati."

The aforementioned young lady uncomfortably leaves the table.

"Acting like what, Miss Fenhill," the Captain asks as nonchalantly as she can.

"Like you're each other. Are you trying to break some kind of record for the longest impersonation?"

"No." The older man furrows his brow. "Why would say that?"

"Because, you dimwit, we haven't broken character."

"Don't call me a dimwit, you bigger dimwit."

The two get into a verbal boxing match over the proper use of the word 'dimwit' until Ellie gives up trying to get a word in sideways and leaves the table.

"Smooth, Vicar. Really smooth." The Vicar chugs down the rest of his coffee, leaving the table as Felix and Nyoka enter.

"Where are you going?"

"To find the cave scientist, and to get my green coat. Should I pretend to invite you, so you can invite yourself guilt-free?"

"Damn right."


	3. Chapter 3

_(Please Note: I make small references to two made-up religions, and a peanut-related snack food that are not canon in game.)_

The Vicar runs up the rusty staircase, flinging open the door leading to the roof of the sparsely occupied building. He runs to the edge and looks out over the curved, vibrant Fallbrook main street, concentrating hard on the shapes of the buildings. "Hmm..."

The young lady calmly peers over the edge of the two-story building. "What's 'hmm'? And where are you planning on going?"

"I'm trying to follow the landmarks to find the scientist, but my brain isn't…" he snaps a few times, trying to find the right words. "It's not...making connections."

"Left," she says, looking at the neon sign over the right middle building. "Follow the low river, then left." She's confused, but it's clear in her mind what the trail looks like.

"Are you seeing the landmarks?"

"I..." The trails of where almost every interesting place crosses her mind, leaving a jumble of directions that are clear as crystal to her. "I don't know, exactly. I can't describe it without sounding crazy."

"Left it is, then." He leads the way back downstairs.

"By the Law, how do you get anywhere with directions like these," she genuinely wonders, trying to iron out the mental mess into something more orderly.

The two weave their way around a smattering of overturned furniture, as the Vicar opens every box and closet he can get his hands on. "I manage."

"And 'by Order and the Law go you', I suppose."

"Sure, I guess." He heads outside and down the lit up central street.

At the edge of town, she points the way toward the cave deeper in the wilderness. "Considering the place where we met the man was in shambles, he may not even be there anymore."

"It doesn't matter, I have to start somewhere." The old man veers away from the road, cutting through the foliage.

"So you're bringing _only_ me? Into a Raptidon-infested cave where _three_ of us barely made it out alive, let along through, unscathed."

"You either take it or leave it Vicar. You said you didn't want to explain all this," he waves his hand in her general direction. "And you know for a fact, whoever we bring along is gonna start asking questions, with the exception being SAM."

The young lady huffs, pulling a soft frown at the mention of the large, green bot's name. "Fine, but if anything happens—"

"I'll trust you to be angry ol' you, Vicar DeSoto. Just in a less muscle-bound body." A stray bullet whizzes by, nicking him in the arm. "Fuck! What the hell was that from?!"

"Trees, now!" The Captain heads for the thickest cluster, dragging the hurt Vicar along behind her. The young woman carefully examines the wound and determines it to be a non-lethal crease, but it will hurt for a while.

The old man swears up a storm through a set jaw, bringing out his weapon. "Ellie wasn't kidding, you _do_ curse a lot for a religious figure."

"And _you_ keep confusing a Scientician Vicar with a Neo-Catholic Priest and a New Christian Disciple." As she pokes her head from behind cover, another shot narrowly misses her.

What sounds like commands in gibberish are shouted to the nearby rocky hills, and a group of scattered Marauders hurries down from both sides, weapons ready.

The over-zealous young lady bears her teeth, bring out her pistol as she charges toward the group still cracking shots off.

"You don't just run in, Vicar," he shouts over the gun fire, poking his head out from behind thin trunks. "You're still me, remember!"

The young woman catches a shot in her upper thigh, flooring her in an instant.

The old man ignores the stinging throb of his wounded arm, chasing after the young lady as he picks up a fist-sized fungus-crusted rock. He scampers up the nearer of the hillsides, hurling the stone at the nearest Marauder. It beans him square in the middle of his helmet, stunning him a few seconds. "Over here, you brain-dead son of a bitch!" He picks up another rock and effortlessly pitches it hard at the helmet of another one of the crazed group, getting him in the same exact spot as the other. "Fresh meat, you listless unemployed—" A few of the attackers bring their sights to bear on the Vicar who makes haste down the hill, collecting rocks and dodging bullets.

The Captain uses the momentary distraction to crawl into cover behind a thick cluster of hearty fungus stalks. She grabs hard at the bleeding wound, squeezing as she takes shots at rag and peace meal plated backs, watching them fall one by one.

Despite his best efforts, Vicar DeSoto cannot seem to pull the collective attentions of their attackers away from the wounded young lady, even when in the thick of battle.

As the bodies settle into the red and brown dirt, and the weapons are finally put away, the two travelers are bloody and exhausted.

The old man limps over to where the young lady has holed up as best she could, seeing her applying pressure to a large stain of red seeping out from underneath her black chest plate.

The young woman slumps over onto the dirt, her eyes lidded and her chest heaving.

"You idiot," he quietly chastises, laying her out on her back and removing her chest armor. "You're supposed to stay back and distract them, like I always do."

She lets out a strangled cry of pain as one of his larger hands press into her bleeding side. With the other free, he reaches into her satchel and brings out her emergency inhaler and forces her take a dose.

The Captain's pain ebbs away as her wounds clot and scab almost immediately. "Very...tired. Lost... lots of...blood."

The old man slaps her cheek gently, keeping her in the waking world. "Come on, Vicar, don't go to sleep. My—_your_ hands are awkward, and I need my brain."

"But I'm...tired."

A deep, guttural growl from a nearby ridge line makes the hair on the back of the old man's neck stand. He carries her in the direction they were headed before their harrowing clash, detouring to the nearest empty cave he can find.

Over the steady drip of water from the rocky roof of the cave, the Vicar sits against a cool stone wall, keeping vigil over his passed out colleague laying next to him. He expertly pitches chunks of rock dead center through the holes of a yellow fungus lattice across the stony room, thinking slowly through their conundrum. The old man sighs, frustrated by the and ineptitude of himself in a fight. "I don't work like this. What if we're stuck," he wonders to himself in a low, soft voice. "What if that machine can't fix us? Are just going to stay this way until we die?" The notion of dying as an old man disgusts and frightens him. "I'm not going to dwell on it." He waves his worry away, reaching into his satchel for the blueprint data pad.

He flips though the renderings on the small screen one by one, methodically going over every word, note, and footnote, to try to suss out some kind of workaround. The circuits and wires make more sense than before, but his brain can't seem to make heads or tails of how one console directs power to the other. "Flow regulator to Conduit…One goes to the other, but why doesn't this make sense?" His brow furrows as he chews on the information presented on the screen. The same nagging feeling from before prods at his thoughts as he sits and stares at the half of the blueprint labeled 'Conduit'. "That word…" The nag becomes an itch, and the itch, an urge, the longer he stares at the word, until finally, something clicks into place. "That word wasn't there before! It was Converter, not Conduit!" His happy revelation is quickly soured by the thought of someone tampering with the pad. "Shit."

From beside a contemplative Vicar, the Captain wakes up, blinking the fatigue from her eyes. She smacks her dry lips, taking a hard look at her surroundings. "This isn't the right cave. Did I pass out?"

The old man places his pad on the dirt floor of the cave face down, picking up a sharp rock. "For two hours."

The young woman sits up, confused as to why he's feeling around the back of the portable computer with scrutinizing fingers. "What in the name of the Law are you doing?"

"Trying to get to the battery." His long fingers catch on a nearly invisible seam near the bottom of the device. He drives the pointy end of the rock down where his fingers are poised, denting the thick plastic-metal cover.

"Are you insane?!" She rolls over and snatches the pad away before he can do anymore damage. "We need that blueprint!"

"That's not the right one anyway!" He tries to take it back, but her reflexes are still faster than his, even in her recuperating state. "Give me it!"

She gets to her feet, and runs to the eastern side of the cave. The young woman deftly climbs up a group of moist red rocks, her occupied hand not slowing her down in the least.

The old man follows after her the few feet up, but she shoves him away with a dirty boot to his shoulder, watching him back slide off the rocks and land awkwardly on his feet at the bottom. He tries once more, but the same result happens. His heavier, muscular body is no match for her skinnier, quicker one. "That's not fair, you're using me against me," he shouts up after her as she climbs higher.

"This," she holds out the scuffed data pad from her perch, raising her voice over the reverberation of the cave. "Is the only thing we have left if we can't locate the scientist! Why were you trying to break it?!"

The Vicar gives up on trying to climb after her, instead resorting to cupping his hands around his mouth. "I found something interesting when you were asleep! Look at the annotation between the tenth and eleventh slides in the larger margin! It says 'Conduit', not 'Converter'!"

The Captain flips through the screens, studying the letters intently. "I don't see a difference! Maybe you're mistaken!"

"I remember specifically working on the console labeled 'Converter', not 'Conduit'!"

"And you're sure you're remembering it right?!"

"I'm completely sure! Your head's a steel trap! It took me a while, but I remember you said 'Converter' in passing!" He shakes his head. "_I said_, not you, which means—"

"Your pad was tampered with! Also something about shoes!" She furrows her brow, not seeing the connection.

"Are you going to let me crack open the pad now, Vicar?!"

"No!" She stores it in her satchel. "We may need it as a Plan B!"

He gives her a few choice words under his breath before changing the subject. "Hey! I got a question about you!"

" '_Have_ a question', not 'got'!"

"You can throw a ball like nobody's business, why don't you hit people with rocks when you fight?!"

The look of sheer disbelief that plants itself on her pinched, feminine features is nearly palpable. "For the same reason anyone with a brain doesn't bring a knife to a gun fight!"

"Oh…"

A frown pulls at the side of her lips as she climbs back down. "Do you know what surprises me the most about you?!"

"My charm and good looks?!"

"Your intelligence and mental fortitude!" The Captain hops from a ledge to a boulder, wedging herself between two stalagmites as she moves down. "Although why you see fit to hide it behind this...overly jolly, idiotic facade of yours is beyond me!"

He furrows his brow, giving her an inquisitive look as he watches her climb down the jagged face of a rock wall. "You think I'm a softie, Vicar?"

"No, but I do think you're troubled." Her boots meet the dirt floor with a soft thud. The young woman dusts her hands off, amazed she's not out of breath. "You're always rambling on about being a Hope colonist, but we both know that's impossible. Something truly terrible must have happened to you to make you believe that." 

He rolls hie eyes, getting peeved. "Why did I even bother telling you the truth, you don't believe me."

"On the contrary, I believe you, but only because you believe what you're saying with unshakable conviction."

"Which is the same thing as saying 'you're nuttier than mock peanut spread'. Like I said, you don't believe me, like everybody else I've told."

"And there you are, assuming I'm small-minded. Just because I'm a 'crotchety old bastard'," she emphasizes the words with finger quotes. "Doesn't mean I'm thick-headed."

"You could have fooled me, _Scientician Man,_" the mocking tone of the last two words serves to make his female companion's headache twinge a bit harder than usual.

"That's not even a proper insult to Scientism, let alone offensive." The Captain leads the way out of the cave, stopping at the mouth to wait for the old man to follow. "If you're finished slinging your juvenile insults, let's get going."

"Speaking of 'going'…" The Vicar looks down at his beige and tan pants, frowning.

"Now?! Of all the times, it's now?!"

"I drank too much coffee this morning, so sue me!" He gives a cursory glace around the rocky insides, hurrying behind the widest of the stalagmites. "Nag, nag nag!"

With the bright yellow sun shining bright and hot in the midday sky, the two travelers march across the short grass to the out of the way place this whole fiasco started. "That's it." The Captain points at the entrance to the cave nestled between a grove of trees sparse with leaves, and a boulder with inhumanely large chips taken out of it. "Under the cold-naked tree next to the bitten boulder." Her lips twist into a disgusted frown. "How is that a sentence?"

"It's not, it's directions." He rushes down the road, stopping at the too perfect opening of the cave. He brings out his shotgun, leaning toward the darkness, leading with his ear. "I think the Raptidons left," he whispers, taking a step inside.

"Don't be an idiot," she tells him, bringing out her pistol and heading onward.

He mocks her under his breath, following close behind.

Where the cave entrance splits off deeper into the darkness, the two travelers take opposite sides of the fork, and agree to meet on the other side.

After a few minutes of groping and stumbling through nothing but dim light, they exit into a large, oblong room hewn from the rock of the cave, the Captain on the upstairs level, and the Vicar at the downstairs.

Large, open spaces dot the floor between empty desks and overturned chairs. Anything not heavy or bolted to the floor is piled against the only other way leading from the room, with the flimsy door half hanging off its hinges.

The two poke around the abandoned furniture on both levels, finding vague notes and only the basics of handheld machinery abandoned in the rush to leave.

Out of habit, the Vicar opens every locker and supply box, finding only the bare minimum of useful things.

Seeing their search over before it started, they meet one another on the top floor stairwell, telling the same story of naught found about the man they came for.

"They left. A while ago it seems," the Captain points out, nodding at the fine layer of dust on the light fixture above her head.

The older man sighs, climbing the metal stairs to the upper floor. "Dammit…" He paces between the office furniture, flexing the nervous energy out of his hands.

"It looks as if they were in a hurry, as well." She gives a cursory glace at the lower floor's disheveled state.

"Dammit!" With a loud, angry shout, he slaps a desk lamp violently from its perch on the corner of the nearest desk, sending it crashing onto the tile floor. "Why can't anything be easy!"

The young woman feels her shoulders tense, and her body coil with anxiety. She plants her boots resolutely, refusing to give into her flight instinct. "Getting angry isn't going to solve anything! Calm down!"

"I can't, you're just—" He can't seem to find the appropriate words to put to the hard knot of emotion churning in his chest and belly. "I'm getting tired of it!"

She keeps herself in one place with every ounce of her willpower, watching her hands tighten around the railing of the upper story as she tries to keep her emotions in check. "Maybe now you'll listen to me when I say 'this is not a good idea, don't do it'."

The Vicar starts reciting whatever comes to mind as he tries to calm himself with more pacing.

She watches him try to work through the mess of anger and resentment by dissecting and bottling it up, but his tense posture and hard tone tells her it's fruitless. "Its not working, is it? You still feel like you want to physically destroy something with your bare hands, don't you?"

"Yeah."

Her years of seminary discipline kick in, and the need to run is beaten back from her fore brain. She turns to look him straight in the eye, unwavering in her next statement. "Then do it."

His harsh tone is now squarely directed at the woman with a single desk between them. "I'm not gonna go around breaking things because I feel like it."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not my stuff to break!"

"Your problem is you keep thinking like you. You bottle your negative feelings and redirect them to another outlet. I don't have that luxury, sadly. My feelings are always churning and boiling right at the surface, and when it bubbles over, it's already too late. Stop thinking like you, and start thinking like me, or very soon, you're going to kill someone you don't mean to in a blind rage." After her insightful rambling, she pauses for a moment, wondering where it all came from.

An epiphany strikes the man. "That explains why you look like you're constantly stewing about something but you can't figure out what."

The Captain gives an irritated huff, demanding he either go break something expensive, or they get back to the task at hand.

Still feeling a bit cross with his ordeal, he picks up a flimsy metal chair and sends it flying into the screen of a nearby video monitoring console, lodging its four legs inside the broken glass screen. He laughs as the wires spark and blink inside the monitor, feeling his head clear and his mood even out. "Let's see the facts. I know—_you_ know how to read the shorthand in the facility, and the shorthand you use came from your seminary studies. Ergo, the facility used OSI money, or the people in charge are from the OSI."

"Obviously," the young woman retorts, crossing her arms.

"But not so obvious is the fact that it's abandoned, and a working prototype was left inside." He drudges up images of places they've been to, trying to make sense of the bits and pieces of scattered information they've collected so far. "Nobody just leaves a prototype laying around unless its under dire circumstances. When we talked to the scientist, he wasn't worried about the machine so much as he was about worried whether we could find it, and make sure it worked."

A thought comes to her in a jumbled flash. "It was a set-up? A very elaborate set-up?"

"It might not be a set-up." The Vicar shrugs, chewing on the breadcrumb clues swimming around his noggin. "The man and whoever he's working with probably wanted to prove a point, and we just happened to cross their path. We have something of a reputation by now, at least. Maybe he saw this as a 'feather in his cap' sort of thing."

The lady furrows her brow, waggling her finger in his general direction. "No, wait a minute. This is making even less sense than before. Why would any Scientician with even the slightest amount of clout be funding and staffing a project like this? Results are what they're after, not pseudo-intellectual excises with large price tags."

The old man throws his hands up, conceding to her will. "Well, I can't make any sense of it either, except for the fact that we need to find a way to get to the OSI and ask questions."

The Captain chuckles at the thought of the Order being that reasonable to the layman. "_You_ don't talk to the OSI, the _OSI_ talks to you. At _their leisure_, I might add."

"You're a Vicar, you must know some people."

"Yes, I'm one of the anointed, but one who's not in very good standing with the majority of my superiors."

He groans, not seeing any other way but a clear-cut straight path ending in the truth. "Maybe we need to get the others into this, then. They might be able to help."

"Let me refresh your memory, Captain." Before she goes on another verbal tirade, she takes a deep breath to steady her nerves. "The last time we interacted with the rest of crew in this very compromising state, their attitudes were less than understanding, to put it mildly. If we were to earnestly tell them the truth, they might think we're still lying, or even worse, crazier than before. And if the crew says you're a 'bona fide' crazy, and not just your average run-of-the-mill disturbed, I doubt your ship will stay in your hands long enough for you to protest." A wave of chills washes over her as she finishes.

"You always think the worst of people, don't you Vicar?"

"I'm being realistic. This is the exact reason I refused to tell anyone in the first place."

He takes a seat on the corner of desk, taking a few, long minutes to come to a conclusion where they both will be satisfied. The Vicar sees only one. "Since I say yes, and you say no, we'll fight for it." He holds out his closed fist sideways toward the woman leaning against the upper railing.

She narrows her eyes at him.

"Paper, Rock, Scissors, dummy, not an actual fight." He puts on his best nonplussed expression, waiting for her to comply with a closed fist of her own.

"By the Architect and the Law..." She rolls her eyes, then holds out her fist in the same way "I can't believe our fate comes down to a child's game."

"Oh, quit your whining and count us down, Vicar."

She slumps in defeat as they pump their fists up and down in sync. "Paper, rock, Scissors, shoot!"


	4. Chapter 4

The Captain and Vicar trudge up the weathered metal ramps of the Cascadia landing pad, panting, covered in a noticeable layer of dirt and animal blood.

The young woman stops at the middle landing, leaning heavily against the railing, forcing hard breaths through her dry nose.

The Vicar shuffles past her plopping down on the nearest crate, resting his head against the side of the lone computer terminal. The old man gulps down mouthfuls of air, wondering why he's more winded than he usually is. "Are you…ready," he asks between heavy breaths.

Still peeved at loosing in a paper, rock, scissors match, she closes her eyes, massaging her temples. "No. This is still…a terrible idea."

He limply waves her negativity away. "Not everyone…is close-minded. Have some faith…in the human side of science."

She peers over her shoulder, brow knit, and a stern frown planting itself on her dry lips. "I've seen people…loose their entire livelihoods…for less."

The old man chuckles to himself, as a particularly old memory jabs at his pride. "You know better than anyone that fear shouldn't stop you from achieving your goals." He drags himself to his tired feet, and waves her toward the Unreliable. "We can do this, Vicar. Up and at 'em."

The two limp up the ramp and inside the cool metal ship interior.

"You call the meeting," the Vicar tells her crossing into the kitchen and plopping down into the nearest kitchen chair, resting his head on the dingy plastic tabletop. "I'm dying all over." The Vicar finally catches his breath, his whole body rebelling against any movement beyond the occasional twitch of a finger or toe.

The young Captain rolls her eyes taking her own seat. "You're not dying, you've just overworked your muscles. We did just run all the way back to the ship across miles of wilderness."

Felix strolls into the kitchen. "Hey, Boss." His cheerful timber hardens as he sees the old man with his head down on the table top. "Vicar." The young man opens the overhead cabinets and stares at the dented cans.

"I'm calling a crew meeting Mister Millstone," the young lady informs him as he pulls down a can of Boarst N' Beans. "Please gather everyone into the kitchen."

"Parvati," he yells down the hall cracking open the can.

The goggled head of the resident engineer pokes out of her quarters after the noises and moving instruments quiets down. "Whatcha need, Felix? Oh! Hi, Captain."

"I'm calling a meeting, Miss Holcomb, where's Miss Ramnarie-Wentworth and Miss Fenhill?"

"Nyoka said she was going to go hunt for a bit, since we're not leaving anytime soon."

"Did she say she where on Monarch she was going?"

Parvati's pursed lips pull into a gentle frown as she tries to recall the conversation. After a moment, shakes her head. "I don't know exactly. She was slurring some of her words, so Miss Ellie decided to follow her."

The older man's laugh is muffled inside his arms.

The Captain shoots him a dirty look before thanking Parvati.

Her head disappears back around the door frame and the sounds of electrical tinkering commence once more.

The exhausted Vicar lifts his head, quietly laughing at her with his smarmy smile. "Since we're going to have to wait on the other two, you should go take a bath, you stink."

The young woman takes a few sniffs of her borrowed body, grimacing. "You're not wrong."

He shrugs, the ache in his shoulders returning. "I sweat a lot."

She looks toward the bathroom door, her face gently pinching at the thought of having to shower in her current state.

"If it makes you feel any better, you have my permission to look." The old man pulls a face as he tries to roll the aches out of his broad shoulders.

"It doesn't." The young woman gets up from her seat, making her way to the stairs. "You're not my type anyway." She heads to the last door on the right, clicking on the light in the small bathroom as she locks it behind her.

The sore old man musters a weak laugh, cradling his now throbbing head in his hands. Felix scraping the bottom of an empty can sets his teeth on edge as the dull pain pounds at the back of his tired eyes.

"Hey, Vic, I got a question." He lays the can sideways on the edge of the counter, unable to find the garbage can for the kitchen.

"Yeah?" He squeezes his eyes open and shut a few times.

"Why are you and the Captain pretending to be each other?"

He half turns in his chair, trying to ignore the coming migraine. "Why do you ask?"

The young man shrugs, a note of concern flitting across his face. "Ellie said you and the Captain were playing at something. She said it was getting kind of weird."

"Ellie's concerned now?" A dread feeling prods at his chest. "She usually doesn't give a care one way or another unless she thinks its serious."

His nose wrinkles and his mouth pulls into a soft frown. "You do sound weird."

"I'd better tell him after his shower." The older man gets up from his seat, heading for the stairs at the end of the narrow hall.

Following a bout of awkward washing in a hot shower, the Captain enters her quarters, towel wrapped firmly around her damp body, finding the Vicar flat on her bunk with a pillow over his face. Her natural perceptiveness gives her the impression of extreme discomfort and pain. "You're getting headaches too, I see."

"My head is pounding out a Samba," comes the muffled retort of her shipmate. "I can't concentrate and everything is blurry around the edges."

"Is the pain radiating towards the neck and shoulders?"

The Vicar grumbles an affirmative.

The abundant medical information swimming around her head points to a severe migraine that may eventually put him in the hospital if it keeps getting worse. The young woman holds her towel in place, pushing over the man's hand as she takes a seat next to him. "Sit up."

He follows her instruction, dry heaving as he stays hunched over.

She reaches behind him, placing a hand on each shoulder and does her best to massage the knots out.

As the pain ebbs from his forehead, the Vicar relaxes, leaning into the long dainty fingers at the base of his skull.

One of the Captain hands slowly move up to the top of his head, and the other lays across his chin.

"What are you—" His neck is twisted sharply to one side. It gives a shark crack as the muscles of his shoulders begin to relax.

"Better," she asks, adjusting her towel as she stands back up.

The migraine in his shoulders is almost non-existent. "I feel better, thanks Vicar." He sees what was once himself in a towel and gets uncomfortable at the mental disconnection from what is both himself and not himself at the same time. "Can you put some clothes on? Looking at you like this doesn't…feel right."

"It's _your_ body." She folds her arms across her chest. "You can't seriously be telling me you're ashamed to look at yourself."

"It's not modesty, it's…" he tries to grasp at the threads of what he felt earlier, but it's an altogether alien feeling. "I don't know what, exactly. And you pointing that out doesn't make looking at my almost naked self in the third person any better." He lays back down, throwing an arm over his eyes.

The young lady rolls hers, opening the drawers under the narrow bunk for a change of clothes. "I'm assuming you're here for something more important than a suggestive peek at yourself." She finds nothing except books, papers, and pencils.

He directs her to the dresser against the tall windows. "Did you know Ellie's getting worried about us? It sounds serious."

"I was expecting some kind of reaction from her, considering the way she pointed out our 'peculiar' behavior. Though I was hoping it would be later rather than sooner." The young woman picks through the draws for some proper underclothes, but only finds another embellished gray skin suit."Why do you wear an antique swim suit under your clothes?"

"It's not a swim suit, its my standard issue under suit. My contract stipulated I had to wear what they gave me before boarding the Hope and leave everything else behind on Earth. And frankly, it's more stylish than the underwear I've seen around here."

The Captain sighs, bringing out the skin suit and giving it a once over. It reminds her of an antique garment from an octogenarian's closet, but lightly worn. "The hard-headed streak she tempers with her laid back veneer isn't going to let this go, even with your exceptional skill for persuasion." She drops her towel slipping into the stretchy gray form-fitting suit. It fits snugly around her curves without pinching, and is soft to the touch. The material of the garment is much more well built than most clothes she's worn, and the shiny embellishment around the shoulders provides a light, leathery protective shell.

"Aren't you glad I got you to tell the truth, now, Vicar?"

"No, you imbecile, I'm not." The woman towels her long dark hair. "It's only going to make Doctor Fenhill think our insanity is the permanent kind." An unnerving chill runs down her back at the thought.

"There you go being negative again." The older man gets up, groaning in relief as the migraine abates. "Mellow out once in a while."

She throws her towel at him, getting him square in the face. "Is that your professional medical opinion, Captain?"

"One of these days, you're gonna get an ulcer." He chucks the towel at the pile of clothes beside the dresser. "Also, did you cry in the shower by any chance?"

Her brow furrows and a frown plants itself firmly on her pink lips. "You couldn't possibly have heard anything, I'm sure of it."

The Vicar let's out a resigned sigh. "I cry in the shower so no one will hear me. It's been happening on and off since I landed in the Emerald Vale." He clears his throat, forcing himself to sit a little straighter. "So just in case you feel like crying, don't worry, it happens."

She feels a lump forming in the back of her throat. "How do keep up your happy front all the time with this…" she fumbles for an adequate adjective. "…I'm not sure what it is except the overwhelming need to cry."

The older man rests his hands on his knees, quietly hemming and hawing at the question for a handful of seconds. "It could be a symptom of prolonged cryosleep, or bouts of existential dread. Maybe its just a lifetime of regret finally surfacing after too much inner reflection." The Vicar shrugs. "I don't know, I'm a doctor not a psychologist."

The young lady's stoic facade falters at the realization of the depths of her own unhappiness. "You're just as miserable as the rest of us, maybe even more so considering your delusions. If I wasn't such a pragmatist, I'd be more disheartened."

The Vicar frowns ever so slightly, covering it up with a restrained smile. "No one says you can't be. Just don't be surprised when you heart starts to melt from all the warm fuzzy feelings in your body. _My_ body," he immediately corrects.

"How droll." She sarcastically quips, turning to look for some clothes.

Vicar DeSoto gets up, heading for the door. "In all seriousness, Vicar, I know me. If you need to cry, cry. If you need a hug or someone to talk to, I'll be in your room." He shuts the cabin door behind himself.

From the entrance door of the Unreliable, the whooping and hollering of an obviously inebriated and elated Nyoka echoes through the front anti-chamber into the adjacent cargo hold and kitchen.

Ellie follows close behind, tipsy, but still able to direct the excited huntress to the nearest seat. She plops down in the chair next to hers, laughing at the garbled jokes being thrown her way.

The hullabaloo from the kitchen wakes the Vicar from a restless sleep. A heady laugh followed by a happy, but sedate response gets the old man up out of his hard bunk and hurrying over to the stairs at the end of the hall. He takes them two at a time, rolling his patterned yellow sleeves to his elbows. "Vicar!" He pounds his fist on the door. "They're back!"

After a few silent moments, the Captain in a SOME OUTFIT answers, visibly shaken.

"You look scared, what's wrong?"

"Nothing…" The Captain clears her throat, hardening her composure. "Bad dream."

He gives a knowing grunt. "I get those a lot too."

"I'm sure." The young woman sidesteps him, heading downstairs.

Vicar DeSoto keeps in step with her, knocking on the cabin doors of Felix and Parvati, summoning them to the kitchen. He yells across the room and into the entrance anti-chamber for SAM.

As the entire crew meanders into the meeting space, the two decide between themselves how to explain this mess without sounding insane.

"It looks like you two are still at it." Nyoka's comment interrupts the whispered argument boiling between the crew mates.

The Captain throws up her hands. "Fine, but don't say I didn't warn you. Numerous times."

He sticks his tongue out at her, then turns to address the crew. "First of all, we're not 'at anything', Nyoka. Secondly, I'm Captain Hawthorne, and that's the Vicar." He points at the woman beside him, arms crossed, shaking her head.

Ellie smirks, leaning back in her chair.

Nyoka gives a disbelieving chuckle, flicking a chunk of bloody carcass off her sleeve.

Felix laughs at the old man with that juvenile giggle of his.

Parvati softly frowns, a little confused about the whole affair.

The Vicar smiles at the Captain in triumph. "I told you they wouldn't think we're nuts."

"No, I think you're both crazy," the doctor interjects. "But its the fun kind of crazy."

"Like watching those uptight Byzantines have a conniption fit over us tracking dirt on the street." The huntress brushes back a stray dreadlock.

The Captain give him a sarcastic smile, seeing his happy mood utterly crushed.

"You think we're lying again, don't you?"

"Well, you gotta admit it does sound a little…" Parvati shrugs her shoulders awkwardly. "Far-fetched."

The older man is visibly crushed at the engineer's words. "Et tu, Parvati?"

She cringes and squirms in her seat, her face dropping a little. "Sorry Vicar."

Nyoka leans forward in her chair, head cocking to one side and brows knitting in contemplation. "Let's say you really did transplant brains because of that machine we were sent after. What would be the point of something like that? Who even wants something that scrambles your head hard enough that you think you're someone else?"

"That's the same question I asked myself not too long ago," the Captain says.

"Probably immortality," the Scientician concludes. "Why die when you can just upload yourself into another body?"

"Wasn't that the plot of the crossover episode where Halcyon Helene teamed up with the Masked Marketeer and defeated D.T. Scrambler before he could steal the brain of the Eternal Corporate," Felix asks.

"Actually, D.T. Scrambler was the one getting his brain stolen by the Eternal Corporate." The woman in charge sighs as she facepalms.

"Yeah, that one."

"Since when did Vicky get a sense of humor?" The doctor kicks her feet up on the table, lacing her fingers in her lap.

"Believe me, Miss Fenhill, when I say I wish this was joke."

"But it is a joke, right," Parvati wonders, unsure about her own supposition. "You two said it was."

The old man sighs. "We were lying about it being a joke. The Vicar didn't want to tell you because he was afraid you'd think we're crazy."

"Not really crazy," Nyoka yawns. "It's more like you two got committed to an inside joke."

Felix pipes up, his facial expression flitting between confusion and amusement. "Hey, Vic, I got a question."

"What is it, Mister Millstone," the possessed Captain answers.

"I meant the other Vic." He jerks his head at the man in yellow.

"I'm not the Vicar, Felix, I'm just in his body."

"What's gonna happen if you can't get your own body's back?"

The Vicar's mouth opens and closes a few times as he fumbles for an answer. "I don't know, I haven't given it much thought."

"I have," the young woman interjects. "And I already have a list of things you're _not_ going to do with my body. Chief among them being 'no sex'."

"Do you think so little of me that you'd think I go out and find 'special company' like this." He angrily gesticulates up and down his well-muscled form.

"Yes," she says without an iota of hesitation.

"So are we done with the meeting," the red-headed woman inquires. "I really wanna get some shuteye."

"Right, the second reason why we're here." He clears his throat, gathering his thoughts. "So, we found out some things, and now we need to find the main OSI office for this colony. Preferably an office with a Bishop or some other very important religion guy. Does anyone know where it might be?"

The various crew members give different levels of contemplative ignorance.

Ellie speaks up first after a handful of minutes punctuated by the occasional murmur. "I heard there's an office like that on Earth."

"There's the one in Edgewater," Parvati points out. "If that counts."

"Monarch's got one, but it's been abandoned since the Board left." Nyoka reaches into her back pocket for her flask and takes a swig from it.

The Captain shakes her head. "None of these places have the high officials we're looking for. They probably never have, now that I think about it."

"Then who's directing this, Vicar? It has to be someone important," he asks her, getting a bit frustrated.

"Well, I'm going to bed." The pirate doctor puts her feet down, getting up from her seat. "As funny as this charade is, it's kind of turning into a bad episode of Space Hospital, which I already hate in the first place."

Nyoka follows suit, dragging her feet to her own room.

Finding nothing to poke fun at about this situation, Felix abruptly leaves.

Parvati as she gives the Captain and Vicar a concerned look before leaving the kitchen, SAM trailing behind.

"I was half right, at least," the Vicar tells the young woman already walking off to her room.

The Captain rolls her eyes and sighs.


End file.
